


The Shadow Self

by GuiltyByDesign (FurtherUpAndFurtherIn)



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Crime, F/M, Murder Mystery, Tags May Change, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-08 12:24:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7757779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FurtherUpAndFurtherIn/pseuds/GuiltyByDesign
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It begins with a beautiful silver vixen, dear to Nick's heart, found dead in a strange house in the city. Antlers of an animal never seen before protrude from her chest. As Nick and Judy chase the mystery down, through the city and beyond, they are inexorably drawn into the tragedies of her life--and the dangers that caused her death. They can rely on no-one but themselves.<br/>There is something in the darkness.<br/>Something that will change them forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Silver Vixen

_they tell me you are wicked and I believe them_

The coyote awaiting them at the front door seemed incongruously cheerful, considering they were standing just outside a murder scene.

“First time?” he asked of Judy, who was nibbling her lip in an attempt to hide her nervousness. Beside her, Nick leaned against the wall by the door, cool and collected as always. How could he do that? His nose was more sensitive than hers, and the reek of blood seeping under the door was enough to make her stomach roll.

Still. This was what she’d dreamed of. Tracking down killers and watching them be trapped in the iron jaws of the law. Honouring the memories of the victims and bringing justice to their families. Policemen kept the peace, and what better way to do that then to plunge into the shadows and remove that which disrupted it in the first place?

The coyote—the medical examiner for the ZTPD—was still waiting for her answer, so she briefly met his gaze and nodded.

“Breathe through your mouth, then,” he advised, gently. “And we’ve got a bucket in the bathroom. There’s no shame in needing it.”

“Come on, Sully, your face isn’t _that_ ugly,” Nick teased. The ME shook his head resignedly and waved them through.

The house was _big,_ even by Zootopian standards. Judy sank into the carpet up to her ankles. The doors had to be kept propped open with chairs, because none of the crime scene technicians were tall enough to reach the handles without first scrambling up the furniture, which looked as though it had been hacked from redwood stumps. Judy glanced at Nick, who had stopped to run a finger down the wall and was sniffing at it. How he could smell anything through the metallic stink was beyond her.

“Dusty,” he remarked. “The whole house looks pretty run down. But the carpet’s been recently vacuumed.”

Judy nodded, noting the way the strands of the carpet had been pulled towards the door. Their own footprints stood out like burrows in the smooth expanse. “They vacuumed as they left, to hide their tracks.” A thought occurred to her. “Which means they’re big enough to _leave_ tracks. I’m practically wading through this—a mouse or a vole would have to swim.”

“Definitely wasn’t a mouse or a vole,” said Sully. He put his shoulder to the door leading to the bedroom. “All jokes aside: remember the bucket.”

Judy squeezed through the gap and put a gloved paw to her mouth to stifle the gasp. She was two years in the ZTPD, and was not the type of rabbit that keeled over at the sight of death. Police officers were made of sterner stuff.

But this…

Blood was _everywhere._ It had soaked through the white bedding, stained the carpet, and splattered across the walls. The odour was so powerful it clawed at her tongue. Even the ME, a long time veteran of murder, scrunched up his face as he sidled past her.

“Damn,” Nick whispered, his voice as fragile as she’d ever heard it. Somehow, that made her feel better. She exhaled sharply and stepped up onto the portable stairs the crime scene technicians had brought in, so that she could see the top of the bed.

The victim was a fox; that much she could tell. And even through the seep of blood there was no mistaking the strange silver coat, a rare condition envied even by those who despised foxes. The face had been shattered, the snout crushed in, but the eye was instantly drawn to the two massive antlers erupting from her chest. They were nearly six feet in length.

“We can’t be certain of all the details until we get to the morgue, but the victim is a silver vixen, in her late twenties. Death was exsanguination caused by massive puncture wounds by what we presume are antlers. In construction, they resemble the horns of a red stag, but they’re far larger than any deer on record. The bludgeoning of the face is post-mortem.” Sully had climbed up beside her.

Post-mortem. Was that meant to be mercy? Judy stared down into the ruin. The initial shock was fading, to be replaced by a kind of grief for the stranger she had never known. Was the damage to the vixen’s head some kind of insane jealousy? Surely intense passion would have been needed to go to the trouble of crushing a face. She nodded to Sully and climbed back down the steps, going to Nick’s side. He had been unusually quiet, kneeling down next to a small black handbag, a wallet opened in his paws.

“She must have been beautiful,” Judy said softly.

“She was,” he replied, and tilted the wallet up. In the plastic window she could see a driver’s licence that displayed a hauntingly lovely face with unfathomable eyes. “She was beautiful for her whole life.”

Judy turned her head to his. “You knew her.”

He nodded, just once. “Since school.” He pulled out the licence and let her read the name. Audrey Vulpes. “I hadn’t seen her in ten years. I didn’t even know she was in the city. She never seemed the type.”

“It might not be her,” Sully said, having followed Judy down. “The damage to the face means that it’s impossible to identify her with any certainty, and I’m not holding out much hope for the dental work. We’ll have to go to DNA and the nose print analysis.” The soft noses of canines had unique patterns within them, similar to how apes had individual fingerprints.

“Honey Vale will have her DNA and noseprint on file,” Nick said, straightening up.

“She has a criminal record?” Judy queried.

He gave her a quick glance, something unreadable in his luminous green eyes. “Not that I’m aware.”

Sully coughed apologetically. “In certain towns, there is…well, a tradition, I suppose, of keeping profiles of all members of, ah…”

“Say what you like, Sully, I don’t care.” You’d have to know Nick very well to hear the lie in that statement.

“…Well, what are seen as _undesirable_ species. They claim that since most crimes are committed by certain kinds of animal, it’s only logical to keep records of members of those species who live in the precinct, so that the perpetrators of crime may be caught faster.”

“And that’s _legal?”_ Judy asked, horrified.

“Strictly speaking, no,” Nick smiled wryly, “but they know every excuse in the book. You ask them why they have Audrey’s DNA on file, and they’ll undoubtedly tell you that she was briefly taken into custody and later released without charge, but they saw no reason to destroy her records.”

“If the deceased _is_ Miss Vulpes.” Sully walked over to one of the technicians, apparently uncomfortable with the subject matter.

Judy sighed inwardly. Zootopia had made great strides in the last two years, ever since the Night Howler attacks. While it was still unusual to see small animals in the police force, or carnivores peddling fruit, such things were no longer objectionable. But then, this was Zootopia. The creatures who lived there were, for the most part, accepting of change. If you couldn’t tolerate the thought of living shoulder to shoulder with your ancient enemy, then it wasn’t the place for you anyway. Out in the hinterlands, it could be different. Not all of them were little bastions of peace like Judy’s childhood home, and plenty had made it very clear that they were under no inclination to follow Zootopia’s lead in unity. There were towns where even predators as large as lions could not walk the streets in safety…and in certain villages where predators lived in abundance…well, they at least had nothing to fear from Night Howlers.

So lost in her thoughts was she that she didn’t realize that Nick had left the room. She found him outside, talking to another officer. Judy breathed in the beautifully crisp air and waited for him to finish. “Why here?” she asked, once he turned towards her. “This place is absolutely not fox-sized. What was she doing here?”

“No idea,” he replied. “It’s—or rather, it was—a hostel for backpacking elephants. The owner died about six months ago and his son hasn’t decided what to do with it. Nobody is supposed to have set foot in here for at least a month, never mind stay.”

“Who reported the murder to the police?”

“An anonymous call from a payphone just down the street. The dispatcher reckons it was a bat. According to the neighbours, there’s been a few of them squatting in empty houses lately. Probably they broke in here, found her body, and panicked.”

Judy looked at him. He seemed normal enough, but he seemed to have trouble looking her in the eye. “Are you all right?” she said, just loud enough to reach his ears.

“Hadn’t seen her for years, Carrots. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You know, the whole I’m-so-cool-and-in-control act doesn’t fool me one bit.”

“What do you want from me?” he asked with a flash of real anger. “Do you want me to break down and cry? I’m not doing that here! I want this case.”

“The Chief will never give it to us. We’re too involved.” She avoided the word _you_.

“He has to. Nobody else in the force could solve it. You need someone who knows the fox community—“

Now it was Judy’s turn to become annoyed. Hadn’t they spent years overcoming this very thing? “You don’t even know the fox community is involved! How can you say that anyone else would be useless?”

“Audrey didn’t associate with other animals—“

“ _You don’t know that it’s Audrey!”_

Nick seemed about to snap back, then caught himself. The angry light faded somewhat from his eyes. “No, that’s true,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll make my arguments to the Chief. Let’s get back to the station and report.” She nibbled at her lip, but decided not to press the matter.

While they were in the car, Nick glanced at her. “Don’t you want to solve a murder case?”

“I do,” Judy responded. “Very much."

"Then...?"

"It has to be done right, Nick. And you know it. We owe her that." Judy fixed her eyes to the road, but in her heart she knew her words were pointless. No matter what the Chief said, they had been drawn into this case the moment Nick had opened Audrey's wallet.

That was the truth; everything else was just detail.

 


	2. The Foxes in the Morgue

_for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys_

Chief Bogo leaned imposingly over his desk.

“We have the preliminary results back. Noseprint and first DNA check match Audrey Vulpes.” His voice was rough and quiet.

Nick merely nodded. The chief and Judy both seemed to be waiting for a further response, but none was forthcoming.

Bogo cleared his throat. “I expect you’ll want to be part of the murder investigation, Officer?”

He lifted his eyes to the Chief’s. “It would be appreciated, sir.”

“You’re not,” he replied bluntly. “I don’t like having officers handling murder cases where they’re personally involved with the victim. Things get messy, rules get broken. Besides, this looks to be a tricky one—not the ideal case for first-timers.”

Nick nodded again. “As you say, sir.”

The buffalo shared a look of brief confusion with Judy, before shaking his head. “However, I do admit that you may have connections and information that could prove helpful in solving her case. There’s also the fact that Miss Vulpes’s murder is becoming politically difficult.”

“How’s that, sir?” Judy asked.

“There’s already accusations being flung at our head by lobbyists claiming that we aren’t doing enough to help the—“ He paused, and Nick dug his claws into his thigh, knowing full well what word the Chief had been about to utter—“er, _disadvantaged_ species in Zootopia. On top of that, this is a violent killing of a young lady. Antlers? Smashing in a face? That’s evil, officers. I’d be very surprised if this was his first kill, or if it’ll be his last.” Bogo straightened up. “So, you won’t be in the lead on this—but on the sly, you’ll provide whatever information the prime detectives require, understand?”

“Of course, sir.”

“I mean it, Wilde. No holding anything back, even if this means snitching on your other fox friends. You’re a cop now.”

“I fully understand, Chief.”

For some reason, Nick’s insistent calm and politeness seemed to be aggravating the Chief more than if he’d argued every step of the way. “Oh, out with the pair of you. Make yourself useful and get the autopsy report from the intermediate morgue.”

Nick stood up immediately and left the room. Judy caught up with him on the way through the building.

“Are you all right?” she asked, purple eyes dark with concern.

“Stop asking me that.” _I barely knew her._

_Liar, liar, liar._

“I was expecting for you to fight a bit harder for the case, after what you said to me.”

Nick dipped a shoulder. “He would have shown me the door if I looked like my emotions were getting the better of me. I still get to help. That’s something.”

Judy stepped in front of him, forcing him to a halt. She met his gaze firmly.

“You’re not having any ideas about investigating this independently, are you?”

“I don’t have to. Once it becomes clear that the prime detectives don’t have a clue what’s going on, it’ll be kicked over to us.”

_Liar, liar, liar._ But he was good at it, so even though the light of suspicion didn’t fade from her eyes, she let it go.

***

As they walked, he remembered Audrey.

_She is sitting on the wall, her legs swinging back and forth in the sun-drenched spring air. “What do you want to be, Nick?” she asked._

_He thinks about giving her his usual carefree answer, that he wants to be an astronaut or a firefighter or a basketball player, but instead he decides on the truth—a rare commodity for any six-year-old to possess, let alone a fox kit. “I want to be a Scout.”_

_She smiles at him; not the condescending smile of his mother, when he had told her, but a real one of pleasure. “You’d be good at that.”_

_He grins back. They’d been friends for a while, the only two foxes in town who didn’t have a father. Despite the rumours, foxes were almost always fiercely monogamous and rarely left their children. Nick’s father had died, and until then he believed Audrey’s had as well._

_“I thought only prey went for the Scouts?” Audrey queried, tipping her head._

_He shrugged. “Someone’s got be first, hey? What about you? What do you want?”_

_She frowned and thought. “I want to find my dad.”_

_“Your dad? I thought he was dead.”_

_She scowled. “That’s what Mom tells everyone, but he isn’t. He’s just gone. He left.”_

_“All right, but what do you want to_ do _? Like, be a teacher or an artist…”_

_“Dunno. Why are we talking about this?”_

_“You brought it up!” He flicked a piece of grass at her and she giggled._

_“All right, all right. I want…I think I want to be brave.”_

_“Yeah.” He leaned back against the wall. “That would be real nice.”_

***

The intermediate morgue was one of three staffed by the ZTPD, based around size. It was downright impossible to autopsy an elephant on a table meant for a vole, and ridiculous to do it vice-versa. Each morgue hired examiners who were specialists on a variety of different species and sizes.

Nick breathed in the sharp, clinical scent, mixed with a faint meaty odour that made his stomach turn. It was a world of fluorescent lighting and sterile white, slightly too cold and bright. The halls were always just a little too empty; it was a hospital where the doctors strolled instead of sprinted, where the paperwork had numbers instead of names, where the assistants had traded in their smiles and gentle demeanours for the surety that their patients were beyond help now.

He looked over at Judy. She was tough as nails, that girl, nothing _really_ fazed her when you got right down to it, but in the meantime she was a young rabbit who had spent the majority of her life in a sheltered little hole in a tranquil part of the world. “All right, Hops?”

“Fine.” She smiled back, the smile that said she wasn’t fine but she’d stay cheerful anyway. He’d never tell her, but some days he lived for those smiles.

Sully, the coyote from the crime scene, was in the examination room. That wasn’t surprising, as there were no fox morticians in the ZTPD, and Sully was regarded as the expert on canine anatomy in any case. He and Nick exchanged nods as the two officers stepped through the door. There’d always been a little bit of a connection between them; not too long ago, coyotes had faced a similar prejudice to foxes, what with their history of scavenging and petty theft. Neither canid would speak of it aloud, of course, but it was enough to know that someone, somewhere, was walking the same path.

Beside him, on the table, was a body covered by a sheet. And all the chemicals in the world could not hide Audrey’s scent.

“Here for the autopsy report?” the medical examiner asked, pulling the gloves off his paws. He pointed to a sheaf of papers on the desk.

“You’re brilliant, for doing this so quickly,” Judy said while slipping it under an arm.

“Ah, it’s the least I can do. Killings like these—you’ve got to get them fast. While the trail’s still warm. Did the chief let you two keep the case?”

“Officially, no,” replied Judy.

“I see. Well, whatever you’re doing, best of luck. This is going to be a tough one.” He glanced over at the sheet on the table, before dropping into his role.

“As I’m sure you know, we’ve formally confirmed identification of one Audrey Vulpes, although we’re still waiting on a family member to arrive before we can release the body. We got a noseprint and a DNA match from Rosebriar Police Department, although she has no criminal record.” He glanced just briefly at Nick, who motioned for him to go on.

“Cause of death was as stated at the crime scene; exsanguination caused by puncture wounds to the heart and lungs. Here’s where things get odd. According to our analysis, the antlers found in Miss Vulpes’s chest belong to a red deer stag.”

“What? But they’re huge,” Judy said. “I’ve never seen a red deer with antlers like _that.”_

Sully nodded. “That’s the mystery. They are unquestionably red deer horns—DNA doesn’t lie—but they are far, far beyond the largest size on record for that species. In fact, they’re larger than _any_ deer species currently living. The giant deer species of the Ice Ages had horns of a similar size, but not shape. I don’t know of any deer with black antlers, either.” He rubbed his forehead. “Our cervid expert is on holiday right now, but in her emails she states emphatically that they are red deer antlers. Just big ones.”

“So we’re looking for a giant black red deer? He shouldn’t be that hard to find, then.” Nick glanced over at the sheet again. _What were you doing, Audrey?_

“Explains why she was killed in a room for megafauna, then,” Judy added. “I’d bet a deer with antlers like that wouldn’t be able to fit anywhere else.”

Sully sighed. “That’s assuming that this giant stag did, in fact, kill Miss Vulpes. Stags shed their antlers every year. We’ve had many cases of killers trying to frame stags by using their horns as the murder weapon.”

“What do you think?”

“I’m not sure. How does a stag kill a small fox on a bed, with such precise stabbing? The head and neck positions would be awkward, to say the least. There’s also the fact that the antlers have been sharpened, and I’ve yet to hear of a stag doing that; it leads to a great deal of discomfort and difficulty in the outside world.” He exhaled again. “But the antlers show no sign of degradation, which you would expect if someone had simply picked up the antlers off the ground.”

“The face,” Nick said. “Was that by the stag, too?”

“Possibly. The imprints were made by a circular object with great force behind it, but the killer has attempted to disguise this by bludgeoning with other weapons, too. I’d say it’s a hoof, but I’ll need our cervid expert to be certain.”

Judy frowned. “Why would someone try to disguise a stag stepping on her face, but apparently forget about the giant antlers in her chest?”

“Because the face mattered more,” murmured Nick, just softly.

Sully faced them both with the expression of a marathon runner on the final stretch. “No drugs or alcohol in Miss Vulpes’s system, no sign of constraints or any other injury other than the ones to her chest and face. And that’s about it. The rest is in the report.”

“Thanks, Sully,” said Nick, and he turned to the door, Judy in tow. At the last moment he glanced back at Audrey’s corpse, a strange sense rising in his throat. Should he say something? A goodbye?

Judy touched his arm, just briefly. “Sully,” she said, “Audrey—she wasn’t suffering when she died, was she?”

Sully looked Nick in the eye. There was a blue-black shadow in the coyote’s gaze, the calm, soothing deepness possessed by every guardian of the dead, and he offered Nick his.

“It was not swift,” he answered, “but I don’t believe she felt a lot of pain.”

Nick saw again the blood spatters on the walls, the floor, the sheets, and found himself unable to bear imagining the terror Audrey must have been in as she died. But he took the mortician’s response as the kindness it was intended to be.

“Thank you, Sully,” he said again.


End file.
